• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.69-76
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• 2006

Premature cracking of the epoxy coatings applied on ship's ballast tanks(BT) can lead to damage of ship's hulls. To avoid this, it's important to have clear understanding of the underlying mechanism and primary factors of the coating crack. In this study, the efforts were made to clarify the integrated effects of main factors, i.e., initial coating shrinkage, thermally induced strain, steel-structural strain and the intrinsic coating flexibility at the initial and after aging, to the early cracking phenomena of epoxy coating in the ship's ballast tank. The coating crack is caused by combination of thermal stress, structural stress, and internal stresses which is closely related to chemical structures of the coatings. On the other hand, thermal stresses and dimensional stabilities would rarely play a major role in coating crack for ballast tank coatings with rather large flexibility. Crack resistance of the coatings at early stages can be estimated roughly by measuring internal stress, FT-IR and $T_g$ value of the coatings. A new screening test method was also proposed in this study, which can be possibly related to the long-term resistance of epoxy-based paints to cracking.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.219-223
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• 2008

In 2006, as a means to minimize early corrosion failure of ships, thus to enhance marine safety, International Maritime Organization (IMO), proposed a mandatory regulation for Performance Standards for the Protective Coatings (PSPC) for ballast tanks of newly built ships to satisfy 15 years of target useful life. In this regulation, several unprecedented strict rules are adopted as minimum, mandatory requirements for protective coatings of ship's water ballast tanks, and all type of ships sailing international sea are subjected to this regulation which is to be effective as early as June of 2008. The PSPC addresses many technical issues in the areas of surface pretreatment (primary and secondary), coating materials, coating application procedure and inspection as well as necessary documentation. The PSPC rules are new and unproven concepts, which calls for rigorous incorporation of reality-based evidences currently available, since there are no practical experiences in terms of the validity of the PSPC rules. There has been much controversy surrounding these regulations and considerable effort has been made by both shipyards and ship owners alike to achieve a performance standard for ballast tank coatings, which is acceptable to all. In this paper, the background and overview of the PSPC rules are given, and several issues in the PSPC are reviewed as a base to achieve robustness of the proposed PSPC, which will serve as a means to minimize early corrosion and to ensure 15 year target useful life of ships.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.523-532
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• 2010

Co-application of organic coating and cathodic protection has not provided enough durability to low-alloyed steels inseawater ballast tank (SBT) environments. An attempt has made to study the effect of alloy elements (Al, Cr, Cu, Mo, Ni, Si, W) on general and localized corrosion resistance of steels as basic research to develop new low-allowed steels resistive to corrosion in SBT environments. For this study, we measured the corrosion rate by the weigh loss method after periodic immersion in synthetic seawater at $60^{\circ}C$, evaluated the localized corrosion resistance by an immersion test in concentrated chloride solution with the critical pH depending on the alloy element (Fe, Cr, Al, Ni), determined the permeability of chloride ion across the rust layer by measuring the membrane potential, and finally, we analyzed the rust layer by EPMA mapping and compared the result with the E-pH diagram calculated in the study. The immersion test of up to 55 days in the synthetic seawater showed that chromium, aluminium, and nickel are beneficial but the other elements are detrimental to corrosion resistance. Among the beneficial elements, chromium and aluminium effectively decreased the corrosion rate of the steels during the initial immersion, while nickel effectively decreased the corrosion rate in a longer than 30-day immersion. The low corrosion rate of Cr- or Al-alloyed steel in the initial period was due to the formation of $Cr_2FeO_4$ or $Al_2FeO_4$, respectively -the predicted oxide in the E-pH diagram- which is known as a more protective oxide than $Fe_3O_4$. The increased corrosion rate of Cr-alloyed steels with alonger than 30-day exposure was due to low localized corrosion resistance, which is explained bythe effect of the alloying element on a critical pH. In the meantime, the low corrosion rate of Ni-alloyed steel with a longer than 30-day exposure wasdue to an Ni enriched layer containing $Fe_2NiO_4$, the predicted oxide in the E-pH diagram. Finally, the measurement of the membrane potential depending on the alloying element showed that a lower permeability of chloride ion does not always result in higher corrosion resistance in seawater.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.219-226
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• 2007

Pre-construction primer (PCP), or shopprimer, have been applied to steel plates to control temporary corrosion during ship fabrication. For surface preparation at ship block stage, in common shipyard practices, welding beads, burnt and rusted areas shall be blasted or power tool cleaned and the contamination such as zinc salt shall be removed with blasting or power tool. Whereas, the sound film of PCP needs not to be removed or roughened as the paint having good compatibility with PCP is used for the first coat. In many cases, however, full blasting or sweep blasting on the sound PCP treated block assemblies was requested. There still has been argument about the legitimacy of this practice, thus, it is critical to evaluate the quality of the coating system applied on the sound PCP retained condition, comparing with the one applied on the full blasted or sweep blasted condition. In this study, two different epoxy systems for water ballast tank were applied on the surfaces with sound PCP condition, full blasted condition, and sweep blasted condition. Coating performances such as durability, anti-corrosion, cathodic disbondment resistance were evaluated. The test results clearly indicated that the sound film of PCP needed not to be removed or roughened as the paint having good compatibility with PCP based on inorganic zinc silicate.